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Tuesday, 19 June 2007

Okay, I have started my self portrait. This is the first time I have ever tried to paint a portrait at all, let alone a self portrait, so I have no idea of how it will turn out. Those who have been following this blog for a while will already know I am hopeless at painting people, and prefer landscapes. My intention with this painting is to complete the background landscape first, then do the portraits using the grisaille method, where I paint the tones and values in grey first and then glaze colour over the top. Hopefully this method will allow me to paint a portrait without stuffing it up.

Yesterday I sketched in the faces of me and my partner. I am the one on the left with half my head chopped off. If you are wondering why the funny composition, well it was the best photo I have of myself (ha ha). We were taking a "sunset" camel ride at a camel farm just outside Alice Springs. My partner held the camera out in front of us to take our picture and as you can see, his aim was just a bit off. I quite like the unusual composition though, and I hope it adds rather than detracts from the finished picture.

This is the first colour block-in in the background. As (I hope) you can see, there is strong backlighting with the sun coming from behind the trees. It was just coming into late spring at the time and was overcast nearly every day so the sunset was quite dull and insipid. The sky is a bit muddy at this stage, but that will be fixed when I do the next layer.

Edit - well I just got landed a temp admin assistant job that will go from 3 to 5 weeks starting tomorrow, so I will only be able to paint on weekends now. What a short break that was!

6 comments:

wow Kitty....I love the composition...very unusual and works really well.. the background is really fitting...with you being a landscape painter and all........has a clean contemporary feel to it....oh and grats on the job.....

Thanks Kim, I was after a more contemporary feel to the background, so I'm so glad you said that.

As for the job - I don't think $21.00 an hour is worth it to get up at the freeeezing crack of $6.30am.....I think today was the coldest day ever in Brisbane and windy to boot! It made Melbourne look positively tropical!

love the composition!...i can't wait to see the final piece!...don't be so concerned with 'not being very good at people'...you're off to a great start with the sketch...as long as you ge the right values on the right planes, you'll be fine...go for values and tones more than detail...

Thanks for the votes of confidence everyone. I am real nervous about doing the figures. Thanks for the tip Lisa - I will make sure I concentrate on just that. Hopefully it will be easier starting in grey-scale than in colour!